Chris Hitchens on Galloway's justification of a potential murdering of PM Blair

Said as only Hitchens could say it:

Galloway himself is not so averse to a rush to judgment. Asked by GQ if he would justify the suicide-murder of Tony Blair (with the tender GQ proviso that only the prime minister would be killed in this putative assassination) Galloway responded as follows:

“Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq as Blair did.“

The allusion to “the events of 7/7” is to the suicide-murderers who killed themselves and many others in an attack on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005. On that occasion, Galloway told the British House of Commons that Londoners had “paid the price” not of suicide-bombing but of British involvement in Iraq.

Much of the commentary that I read about this amazing statement seemed to conclude that Galloway had provided himself with enough “wiggle room” to avoid the charge of incitement or advocacy. And it is true that suicide-murderers do not require his warrant in advance to go about their work. (They tend to get his approval, or his defense, only after they have blown themselves up.) But if you examine his statement, and the statements that he has made subsequently, you will have an idea of the complete mental chaos that has overtaken a whole section of the “left” who regard Galloway as an anti-war champion.

If the killing of Blair would be “morally equivalent” to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, then obviously it would be equivalent to something of which Galloway presumably strongly disapproves. In other words, it could not be “morally justified” at all, except by an utter moral cretin. And this is to say nothing of the unmentioned question: How right can it be to remove a thrice-elected head of government by any means other than an election? Galloway is a member of Parliament by the grace of an electorate in the East End of London but is widely regarded as a corrupt scumbag, an egomaniac, an apologist for tyranny, and a supporter of jihad. How would he phrase his complaint if someone were now to propose overruling his voters and offing him as the insult to humanity that he has become? I think I can hear the squeals of self-pity already.

Read the whole thing.

Also blogging about this: Eugene Volokh, Decision ’08